The demand for information content, such as access to email accounts, information available over the Internet or other wide area networks, by individuals traveling on mobile platforms is expected to rise dramatically in the following years. Presently, various forms of mobile platforms, and particularly commercial aircraft, are being outfitted with equipment enabling the aircraft to communicate, via a transponded satellite communications link, with a ground based information content provider. This system is known as the “CONNEXION BY BOEINGSM” system available from the assignee of the present application. The CONNEXION BY BOEINGSM system allows a wide variety of information content to be supplied to mobile platforms, particularly commercial aircraft, traveling within a predefined coverage region being served by one or more satellite based transponders. A general description of this system is available in U.S. application Ser. No. 10/008,401, which is hereby incorporated by reference into the present application.
With the ability to supply a tremendous volume of information content to mobile platforms operating within a given coverage region, comes the issue of managing the supply of information content to achieve the most efficient delivery of the information content, and further in a manner which makes the most efficient use of the available transponder bandwidth. Since multiple mobile platforms operating within a given coverage region may only rarely be requesting the exact same information content (e.g., specific weather service or news information), the opportunity exists for the limited available transponder bandwidth to be used inefficiently. This is because when information content is transmitted by a satellite, it is available to all users (i.e., mobile platforms) within a given coverage region, regardless if all users within the coverage region are accessing or requesting the specific information content. For example, one user on aircraft A operating within a coverage region may request the online version of the WALL STREET JOURNAL®, whereafter this information is delivered via the satellite communications link to aircraft A. The user on aircraft A may only view this content for twenty minutes, and then user A on aircraft B may request the same content. This would necessitate using additional transponder bandwidth to deliver the same content to aircraft B. As one can see, transponder resources can end up being used quite inefficiently if the availability of information content is not managed and its delivery is not coordinated in an efficient way.
The need to coordinate and aggregate various types of information content is not nearly as significant with a static wide area network connection, such as a static Internet connection, because the Internet content recipients are geographically static and the Internet connection is continuously available, Furthermore, content available via some wide area networks such as the Internet, is presently available at a relatively low cost.
Thus, what is needed is some form of management over the information content made available to the various mobile platforms operating within a given coverage region in a manner that allows transponder bandwidth to be used much more efficiently and effectively.